“It’s for sale,” Owen repeated.
Sarah blinked at him. “What’s for sale?”
“This.” Owen gestured. “The land. My family’s old place.” He gestured toward the woods. “There’s a house back there, and the people who owned it sold the property to developers. They were going to build, but I guess they got cold feet, or maybe their plans weren’t approved. They put the property on the market again.”
“Are you…” Sarah looked at him curiously. “Are you going to buy it?”
“Me? Hah.” Owen’s voice was bitter. “After the divorce, I’ve barely got two nickels to rub together.”
Sarah jolted upright. “Divorce?”
Owen had the grace to look ashamed. “It was three years ago.”
“You didn’t mention it.”
“Well, I am single.” He had the nerve to sound affronted. “I didn’t lie about that.”
“Leaving out a marriage is a pretty significant omission. Kids?”
When Owen didn’t answer, Sarah stared at him for a long moment. Finally, she reached for her cover-up and scanned the ground for her sandals. “So was this your plan? Find me, seduce me, and talk me into buying back the old place for you?”
Owen looked shocked. Maybe he was shocked. “Sarah, no. Absolutely not. I never planned on finding you, I swear. That was just luck, or fate, or karma.”
Maybe you never planned it, she thought, yanking her swimsuit up over her legs. But once it happened, you were pretty quick to take advantage of it.
“Besides, if you decide to get a place here, it wouldn’t be for me. It would be for us.”
She shook her head. “This isn’t my place, Owen. It never was. I’m not a Pond Person.”
“You could be one, by marriage.” He reached for her hands. His eyes, still such a lovely bright blue, were shining, brilliant with hope. “We could be together here. Our kids could spend their summers here.” He looked at her solemnly. “I have never loved anyone the way I loved you.”
“I believe you.” Sarah sounded remote. She certainly felt that way, like, in a few short breaths, she’d moved far, far away from Owen, even though he was still right beside her. “I don’t think anyone ever loves anyone else the way they do when it’s their first love. Maybe it’s more about falling in love with love than with another person.”
“No!” Owen looked, and sounded, genuinely anguished. With his palms, he rubbed at his hair. “Sarah, you’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever known. I loved you then, and I love you now.”
Sarah bent down and brushed the crushed bits of leaves and grass from the backs of her legs, so that Owen wouldn’t be able to see her face. Maybe he was telling the truth—or at least, the truth as he understood it. Maybe he did love her… but it seemed more likely that what he loved was who he’d been back then, young and beautiful, full of unspoiled promise, before life had dinged or dented him. Sarah could remember him that way; could reflect that version of Owen back at him. Maybe that was what he loved, that previous, perfect, eighteen-year-old self… or maybe what Owen really loved was this place, and his family’s former status. Maybe he’d been longing not for her but for his lost throne, from which he would reign as King of the Pond People.
Whatever his reasoning, Sarah had told him the truth. This, here, was not where Sarah Levy-Weinberg Danhauser’s belonged, and it never would be. Her place was with her stepdaughter and her sons, her mother and her brother. Her place was with Eli, if they could fix what was broken between them. Not with Owen. Not anymore.
“Owen, I need to get back home.”
Owen looked wretched. Probably as wretched as she’d looked, when she’d been eighteen and a freshman in college, when, after she’d spent five days telling everyone about her lacrosse-playing boyfriend at Duke, Owen had dumped her and never told her why. Sarah remembered the agony of it, how she’d tried to figure out what she’d done wrong, how she had tortured herself with thoughts of the prettier, skinnier girls he was meeting in Durham, girls who’d be cooler, and less clingy. Crying alone in her bed while her roommates went to parties, never knowing what she’d done wrong.
“Sarah, please.”
She shook her head. It felt like she’d been sleeping and had woken up; like she’d been ensorcelled, under some enchantment, and the spell had broken. She remembered a long-ago line from a Shakespeare class: Methought I was enamoured of an ass.